The use of mandrels having radially expandable expansion heads is taught in Katz et al., U.S. Pat. No. 4,651,643, and in Katz, U.S. Pat. No. 4,381,709, these patents relating to mandrels for use in the support of a single printing sleeve in a rotary printing press. These constructions of mandrel have received wide acceptance in the printing industry in maximizing productivity by their ability to quickly accommodate any one of a number of different printing sleeves with an absolute minimum of down time of the printing press.
Rotary printing presses are demanding of extremely high accuracy, and thus, are costly. This requires that production of the printing presses be maximized to the greatest possible extent for the printing presses to be economically viable. Commonly, such printing presses can accommodate printing cylinders of 36 inches or more, this in turn requiring that the entire surface of the printing cyclinder be available for printing if maximum productivity is to be realized. While this is cost-effective for large volume production runs, it severely reduces the cost effectiveness for smaller production runs, and it limits a production run to the actual printing plates available on the printing cylinder, with no opportunity of replacing selected ones of the printing plates by different printing plates.